The Pioneer Press spent six months last year shadowing Shomari Carter as he made the transition from a juvenile corrections facility back to school and the community. A two-day series in September 2012 highlighted those efforts. To read the articles and some of Shomari s poetry, click here:

He kicked off the school year strong, but his grades have slipped. He's on track to fail both chemistry and Spanish.

Theresa Neal, the principal at Boys Totem Town, the Ramsey County juvenile correctional facility, shuttles to St. Paul's Central High School to give him a "mini-sermon."

To Neal, it's an urgent mission: "We all know what happened the last time Shomari completely disconnected from school."

What happened was this: Shomari, 17, landed at Boys Totem Town with a felony conviction and spent most of last school year there. Last fall, he returned to Central, bent on graduating on time and tackling college.

His odds were hard to read.

He had smarts and a way with words that whisked him onto the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts stage -- and out of snafus with authority figures.

But Shomari also had a turbulent past with Central and, more recently, a rocky transition back to freedom. In recent years, almost half of Boys Totem Town alumni have committed another misdemeanor or felony offense within a year of release. The facility has reached out to district high schools in hopes of beefing up support for the teens amid treacherous comebacks.

And Shomari's way with words helps him craft excuses he's dangerously prone to buying.

"I will keep my head down and stay out of trouble," he vows in the fall.

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STRETCHED THIN

In December, Shomari makes his way down Central's hallways. He wears a black winter coat too large on his 6-foot-3 frame.

On his bright-red hat, Elmo's round eyes look alert and upbeat. That's in stark contrast to Shomari's listless face underneath. He's woozy from a nap he's just taken in chemistry class.

After receiving his diploma, Shomari Carter is greeted by a teacher. (Pioneer Press: Chris Polydoroff)

After school these days, he has more school: night classes at Gordon Parks High School to catch up on credits. Or else he takes a long bus ride to his Mall of America restaurant job. On those nights, he gets home after 11:30, and there's only so much sleep he can catch before Central classes start at 7:30 a.m.

He hasn't gotten around to filling out college applications, and it's been a month since he wrote his last spoken-word poem.

"It was about me facing my greatest enemy, which is myself," he says.

So far, the school year has gone much more smoothly than Shomari's last stint at Central. His sophomore year he was most interested in defying authority figures, racking up some 30 trips to the principal's office. He spent too little time in class to pass.

"If there was an honor roll for incompletes, I'd be on honor roll for sure," he says.

His relationship with his mother, Queen Wesley -- a single mom, hospital clerk and spoken-word artist herself -- was frayed.

He rarely turned up in the first months of his junior year at Gordon Parks, St. Paul's alternative high school. In November, he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to walk into a home with its front door left ajar, and he got caught.

With a burglary conviction, he arrived at Totem Town mad and stayed that way for a while. But the experience wasn't all bad.

He did some catching up on school, played basketball and filled much of a notebook with verses scribbled in pencil. He struck up a friendship with Neal and with a visiting jazz composer who invited him to perform at an Ordway show.

But within a month of leaving the facility, Shomari returned for another monthlong stay after violating terms of his probation. When he walked into Central last fall, he knew he had only so many chances at a fresh start left.

TEACHER CLASH

At Central, Shomari's report card fills up quickly with A's and B's.

Matt Lijewski, the auto teacher, marvels at the "new and improved Mr. Carter attitude." Shomari first took his class his sophomore year. In short order, Shomari got the hang of electrical circuit boards, became one of Lijewski's "favorite students of all time," but then stopped showing up and failed the class.

Shomari Carter poses for a picture for his mom, Queen Wesley, in their St. Paul home before leaving for graduation. (Pioneer Press: Chris Polydoroff)

But this time around, Shomari sits in the front row, takes a crack at every question, explains circuit boards to stumped classmates and volunteers to read instruction. Lijewski names him "most improved" at the end of the semester.

"He has goals now," says Lijewski.

But Shomari hasn't lost his taste for tussling with authority figures. He sets his sights on Linda Sparling, his new Spanish teacher. He wants to take over her class, calling on students when they raise their hand and ordering them to be quiet when they chit-chat.

But Sparling is not looking to delegate, and they start clashing. Then in December, Shomari complains that the instructions she is giving after handing out a quiz are distracting him.

"You tell everybody else to be quiet and then you talk in front of the class," he protests, then stomps out in a self-righteous huff.

But Sparling isn't about to write him off. She knows the turnaround he's attempting takes major willpower, and she has seen a different side of him. After he and three boys toss potato chips at each other in the back of her classroom, she asks them to stay after school and clean up the mess. A contrite Shomari alone sticks around.

And after the quiz incident, he comes to see her, and his apology rings sincere: He hasn't been getting enough sleep. He is overwhelmed. He snapped.

But midway through the second semester, Shomari decides he has a lock on graduation.

"I was basically done, so I started slacking," he explains.

He stops turning in school work. He lands his first suspension of the school year. Teachers sound the alarms.

Neal of Totem Town heads to Central to have a chat about his report card. Right away, he flashes "a million-dollar smile" and launches into making excuses. But Neal diagnoses a classic case of "I am Shomari Carter. I got this."

"Complacency just doesn't wear well with Shomari," Neal says.

By the end of their chat, Shomari comes to own his mistakes. Neal reminds him his actions have to speak louder than his words.

In a final push to prop up Shomari's bid to graduate, the school puts him on a no-hall-pass list. In Sparling's classroom, just after the bell rings, Shomari insists he must run out to grab a forgotten textbook.

When she says no, he is all bluster, springing from his seat and railing against the school's unjust ways.

"Shomari, you know there are a lot of us here on your side," Sparling says quietly. "So please sit down."

He does. And he steps up his game.

'YOU REALLY CHANGED'

The final bell rings on the last day of classes, and seniors mass at the main entrance. They fish papers out of their bags and toss them down the long flight of stairs leading to Marshall Avenue. The sheets rain on a gathering of parents, siblings and friends gathered to snap photos of the final "walkout."

Then, the group heads down the stairs, cheering and chanting "One-three," their class year. Shomari chants and pumps his fist -- with the intensity of somebody emerging from long, grueling battle.

Down by the street, a few female friends come to give him hugs.

"You done changed, dude," one of them says. "You really changed."

Shomari is graduating and heading to Rochester Community and Technical College. A cousin told him about the school and its well-regarded auto mechanics program. Shomari won a $5,000 scholarship from the Central class of 1963 -- and the "most improved in Spanish" award.

Looking back, Shomari sees clearly that a few supportive adults -- Neal, Sparling, Central Principal Mary Mackbee and his Central counselor -- made the difference between dropping out and graduating.

"I did what I could on my own," he says, "but I would not have done it without their help."

At graduation Tuesday, Wesley sits in the nosebleed section of Roy Wilkins Auditorium. She keeps her eyes firmly on Shomari in the sea of 485 red and black caps on the auditorium floor.

Wesley is worried about the cost of college and the lure of the "party life" in Rochester. But she recently stumbled upon some of Shomari's middle-school honor roll certificates and an essay titled "If I were president." To her, the find was a hopeful sign.

"We all slip and fall," she says. "It's just a point of getting up and moving on."